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1sockchuck writes "JPMorgan Chase spends $500 million to build a data center, according to CEO Jamie Dimon. That figure places the firm's facilities among the most expensive in the industry, on a par with investments by Google and Microsoft in their largest data centers. Dimon discussed the firm's IT spending in an interview in which he asserts that huge data centers are among the advantages of ginormous banks. Dimon also offered a vigorous defense of the U.S. banking industry. 'Most bankers are decent, honorable people,' Dimon says. 'We're wrapped up in all this crap right now. We made a mistake. We're sorry. It doesn't detract from all the good things we've done. I am not responsible for the financial crisis.'"

Sorry to hitchhike on a top thread, but in case anyone came here for interesting discussion regarding a $500 million data center, there is not a single comment below dealing with the topic. Just partisan bickering about TARP, etc.

Dimon is "sorry", yet pretends that he did "good things"? WTF!!! That's a joke, right?

Perhaps he's sorry that, as one of the biggest crooks in the world, he didn't go to jail? Or maybe he's sorry about the wash trading he did, and that he got only a 30k fine, for manipulating the crude oil markets? Or probably, he is sorry for JP-Morgan naked short selling on the Silver market? Or for emitting more bonds of Silver than they physically have? Or...

Come on, we all know what these data centers are for. They are for doing high frequency trading. It's been a long time that we all know such trades are destroying more wealth than it creates.

Such declaration is simply outrageous. We're tired of the financial terrorists. None have been punished, yet destroying jobs and lives by the millions, and proves of that accumulating. This one day will stop, once the general public understands what is going on. They'd better have strong necks when that day comes, because probably, their head will go off, just like in the French revolution.

In the mean time, since the people have lost their power over this disgusting "elite", everyone should play on the same game, and buy (physical) silver coins. Not only this is a very good investment, especially considering today's record low, but this also has the side effect of crashing JP-Morgan, since (as I wrote above) they did very dangerous bets, and already lost billions. As Max Keiser puts it: "GO GO! Silver liberation army!"

This one day will stop, once the general public understands what is going on.

Have you met the "general public"? You seem to have a much higher opinion of them than they deserve. As long as there is bread and circuses the public is NEVER going to understand what is going on. These banks own the politicians and regulators - they are never going to be punished.

Apart from the normal everyday fractional-reserve loans from the Federal Reserve Bank, JPMorgan probably owes close to $0. I'm assuming you were referring to the $25 billion in bailout money, which was apparently paid in full [propublica.org].

Yeah ProPublica is wrong. It's called an accounting trick. Borrow money from the government in loan #2, and then pay back the government on loan #1 (TARP). General Motors pulled the same schenanigans when it claimed to "pay back" the loans, but in fact is still deep in debt to the government.

It's reminiscient to how a certain president (I'll let you guess) claimed to "put 100,000 more cops on the street". In reality the law said 100,000 cops or 100,000 cop-equivalents... like new computers. Most departments spent the money on computers and only hired an additional ~500 actual cops.

When you listen to a politician or CEO or marketer you have to realize they are not lying to you. Instead they are redefining words on the fly (a "cop" is not really a cop... could be a computer), or omitting crucial information (we paid TARP, but we borrowed money to do it).

In GM's case, yes, it was an accounting trick. In JP Morgan's case, Goldman's Case, and in the case of several other banks, it's not. All of the big banks were forced to take loans from TARP; many of them didn't want to. It's widely believed that JP Morgan was among the banks that did not need or want the loans, and has therefore almost certainly paid them all back.

If you don't believe me, please, prove me wrong. Provide some evidence that JP Morgan still owes the government money, even on gross. (On n

The only part that is speculation is that it's believed that JP Morgan didn't need the money. I'd say based on the current health of the company, it's a pretty safe bet. The fact that JP Morgan has paid back TARP money is beyond question.

I bet they do. But how do you determine that they're reporting the actual financial state of the company when the regulators and they have a common interest in representing the company as being healthier than it actually is?

Goldman (and JP Morgan?) don't owe the government anything because they were simply gifted enough money to stay afloat, free and clear. This was done by the government paying AIGs debts to Goldman [realclearmarkets.com], even though they were unregulated, non-FDIC arrangements. In other words, the banking industry set up a scapegoat (AIG) to receive bailouts for it and then die, which it did. So Goldman and the others get their cake ($$$ with 9 zeros) and eat it too (carping about how they never wanted and didn't need TARP).

I happen to know personally that JPM didn't have any interest in the government money (who wants government debt?) and didn't need it (they didn't get into subprime stuff) but they agreed that it was necessary to take it to prevent a panic. They paid it back in full as soon as they were allowed to.

There's a lot of hatred at banks around here, and most of it is fair. But frankly JPM isn't one of them. They're even in favor of tougher (and substantive!) regulations because the uncertainty of crashes hurts the

According to Reuters [reuters.com], in 2007 JPM was involved in subprime lending: "JPMorgan's first-quarter subprime mortgage originations, through Chase Home Finance, jumped 11 percent to $3.02 billion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance." So your knowledge may be more personal than reliable. And as of 2012, according to other sources, is still involved in Credit Default Swaps [wikipedia.org] so there is reason to continue distrusting banks.

Do you hear of any US banks that want Glass-Steagall reinstated? No? Banks want regulations that protect them with a facade of trust, not restrict them from unlimited salaries and shareholder profits. But hey, at least they'll be hiring some database and network admins.

So, when I read that [JP Morgan is] "in favor of tougher (and substantive!) regulations", one may wonder what this means.

It means exactly what you hint at. It's meaningless talk to convince a target audience of properly educated intellectuals. It's fake regulations, lobbied and created by the banking industry. A financial industry which has repeatedly demonstrated, on local and foreign economies, it's systemic skill in taking from the many to give to the few.

What's needed? Among addressing the issues you raises (speculative investments), perhaps also more small local banks and no multinational corporations which are too big t

Specifically, I'm wondering which government program (or anybody else, for that matter) provided the funds for loan #2? I doubt it'd be the Federal Reserve Bank, which wouldn't lend out that much money in the first place (hence necessitating the bailouts) without more cash being in the JPM's reserves.

He's probably referring to what's mentioned below. Last two paragraphs. GM paid back the cash portion of the bailout with the cash that was held in escrow. I think this piece is a little shaky, it appears they just gave the cash part of the loan back unspent. Regardless, it doesn't matter, since most of the true bailout was with a stock purchase. I am not a fan of the GM bailout. The idea that 1,000,000 automaker related jobs were at risk is absurd. If a GM dealership shuts down, they aren't going to

Having lived in Michigan in 2008, I can offer some insight into those million disappearing jobs. They're real. They're almost all in the northern Midwest, in the supply chains heading into Detroit. Machine shops in the area are commonly contracted out for a year at a time making a single set of parts for a car, with full expectation of getting a new contract when that one's filled. Around the massive part plants, other dependent industries grow to serve the hundreds of workers at the big plant - restaurants, grocery stores, strip malls... anything a worker would be likely to stop at on his way home from work.

While the idea that a single car company's reorganization would directly affect that many jobs is indeed absurd, the indirect jobs are just as dependent on Detroit's stability. One lost contract at a small plant can put a few thousand people out of work, and most of them aren't comfortably over the union's safety net. Those contracts aren't exactly easy to come by, either, so if a major manufacturer like GM or Chrysler has to back out of their contracts, it could easily be a few years before the plant could start up again.

Allowing GM to default would have been extremely painful in Michigan; there's no doubt about that. The pain in Michigan would be offset in other parts of the country, and the net would ultimately be positive. But even with the bailout, things in Michigan are bad.
The government should have let GM go through bankruptcy and funded make work programs in Michigan while GM got its house in order (And, likely, got absorbed by another auto manufacturer). Let the free market deal with corporations. When corpor

On the one hand, I agree... Michigan was screwed to begin with, and no less screwed now.

On the other hand, that's a lot of folks whose lives depend on having constant access to that wealth, regardless of where it's distributed.

Michigan effectively put all its eggs in one basket without realizing it. Nobody ever thought that all the Detroit car companies would be failing at once without something else in the area taking their place.

That dastardly Obama and his accomplice, George W. Bush, who signed it into law in December of 2008 before Obama was in office. The union vote would have certainly gone to the Republicans had Obama not intervened!

The auto bailout was stupid, and although Bush had little to no choice, (Why veto a bailout that's going to get signed a month later, and cost more because of the wait?), the idea that it was to secure the union vote when signed into law AFTER Obama was elected but BEFORE he took office is absurd.

They got a fair interest rate. They borrowed $25B, and paid it back 7 months and 20 days later. The revenue to the government was $1.7 B.

It was preferred stock with a 5% dividend, with warrants attached. This basically means the banks sold stock to the government with a required, 5% dividend. The government also received warrants, which allow them to purchase additional common stock at a predetermined price (These warrants were dilutive, that is, existing shareholders pay for the government's profit when they are exercised). The banks "repaid" the loans by buying back the preferred stock. The government was then left with the ability to buy shares of the banks at a discount if their stock performed well (If the share price was greater than the exercise price of the warrants, the government would purchase the shares at a discount).

TARP was certainly not a sweetheart deal. Bernanke and Paulson (Not Geithner) sat in a room and basically said they were going to offer the banks the loans, but it was all or nothing. If anyone refused to take the loans, no banks would be able to borrow. Any bank that had refused would have gone down in history as "The bank that vetoed the bailout." Payback was also forcibly delayed. The idea was that if half of the banks took loans and half didn't, the market would panic, selling the banks that took loans and buying the banks that didn't. This would have caused the bailout to fail immediately, and, in fact, have the opposite of the desired effect.

The Fed ALWAYS extends short-term loans via the discount window. The Fed gave preferential rates because they had incentives that the private lenders did not -- to lower rates without regard for profit. This was a big story when it came out because everyone screamed "$7.7 trillion" when it was really more like $77 Billion in overnight loans, every night for 100 days (Not real numbers, but the math is the same. $ * days = $7.7 trillion, $7.7 trillion / days = average daily on-loan balance. At NO point did the government have $7.7 trillion at risk). These loans were to stimulate lending at the banks, lending is how banks make their money, so of course, the banks profited from this lending. It was a legitimate story, but the numbers were overblown for dramatic effect, something I would not expect from Bloomberg, and they took some heat for it.

Wtf, how is everyone paying the same tax rate "real capitalism"? Tax fairness is a completely normative component of economics. And besides, a "flat tax" that everyone pays the same rate is NOT fair in any way. I would be completely screwed if I had to give up half of my income. Warren Buffet? Not so much.

1) Nobody makes money making sub-prime loans. It's trivial for any idiot to understand that loaning money to people who can't pay it back is a dumb idea.2) The only reason anyone did offer sub-prime loans was because either a) they knew they could sell it to the government (Fannie and Freddie) for a profit, or b) they were forced to by the Fed's regulations requiring a certain percentage of all loans be high risk loans to poor people who were buying houses far bigger tha

1) Then why did so many get sub-prime loans, ending up in people still losing houses today because their payments have continuously gone up? Risk.... none to bank, all on person.
2) So then with this argument you just refuted your previous one... GG there AC... GG
3) How did the Fed create an artificial market when the market was based on supply/demand? Demand went up because people were buying houses, people were buying houses due to sub-prime loan offers not understanding the full implications
4) Yes they did, but they were thinking about the people paying them more, not walking away from the house or bankrupting themselves. The banks actually won out because they are still owed that money by the initial person, they resold the house at auction, and they can get in on the auction loans.
So yes... they do own these people for the rest of their lives or until they pay it off. Wasnt it once said, discover a way for people to keep paying you and you will be rich? Guess what...
Oh and dont come on here all AC and spout your gibberish.

"And how is the bank going to make a profit when the loan is underwater? The best that the bank can do in that situation is to recover the loan principle."

Or never hold the loan in the first place. Mortgage-backed securities = The method by which known bad loans can be packaged up and sold off on the open market to investors, who are told what a great value they are.

Banks generally don't hold loans anymore. They hold servicing rights, which is the money skimmed off you every month when you make a mortgage p

And how is the bank going to make a profit when the loan is underwater? The best that the bank can do in that situation is to recover the loan principle. They can't keep the extra beyond that.

The bank originates the loans and collects fees from the home buyer, then sells the mortgages as mortgage-backed securities and collects fees from the securities buyers. Thus: profit without risk. Well, the risk is that people might start distrusting the banks, but that seems to be solvable by the CEO smiling and saying "hey, trust me. It wasn't my fault!"

Are you intentionally stupid? The problem with the mortgage backed securities was that no all mortgages in the security were AAA rated. They were suppose to be. So you had risk where there shouldn't be risk and then the banks over leveraged themselves.

Corporate executives on ludicrous bonus schemes make shit loads of money on loans destined to fail, in fact that was the whole problem. Immediate bonuses being paid all the way up and down the corporate executive line for shit loans, all schemed from the top down by psychopaths, who didn't care how much money their company lost, as they were all in a cosy conspiratorial relationship to protect each other from outside view.

Thanks to the whole principle of disposable labour, you now have disposable companies. At the highest levels it's all about squeezing out the maximum amount of money out of companies. From dirty off-shore off-balance sheet transactions, that while allowing the companies to cheat on taxes also allow those corporate executives to play all sorts of games with those funds, to cross company conspiratorial schemes to push around funds for no other reasons other than running up executive bonuses.

Pay close attention. It's not really companies corrupting the politics any more, it's corporate executives using company funds to corrupt politicians and government agencies, getting legislation rewritten not so much to benefit corporations but more targeted at generating more income for corporate executives regardless of the consequences for companies. Psychopaths in suits, they are every where at the top executive level.

1) Nobody makes money making sub-prime loans. It's trivial for any idiot to understand that loaning money to people who can't pay it back is a dumb idea.

False! Extending a loan (or owning a mortgage-backed security) to anybody is a great idea so long as I get my commission (or sell it at a markup) and no longer own it when it goes kaboom.

In your imagination, the only party willing to buy those bad loans was the government. In truth, most everybody bought them. Partially this is because the ratings agencies gave these mortgage-backed securities the highest ratings. But the notion this was a wholly government-created situation is just libertarian wishful thinking. Nations in which banks were deregulated the most did worst (see also Ireland), and those where time-tested regulations were preserved did best (see Canada - where average net worth [usnews.com] is now higher than in the US).

Not exactly. The big "advantage" of digital banking is that banks can now lend out many times more virtual money than they actually have [wikipedia.org], making them concentrate on loans as they are far more profitable. Here, the big profit of the bank doesn't come from the banking activity itself but from creating virtual money and inflating the currency. Because of this, banks are much more willing to give risky loans.

Close but no cigar. The reason they made those loans was because the government (Clinton) required them. Business as usual would have meant no changes to banking laws and no subprime loans. Social engineering failed again.

You know how much lobbying money the banks spend, and yet you believe that the banks would have let such a theoretical law be passed? Wow.

The federal government passed laws which prevented banks from discriminating against low-income people if they could pay the loan amount, but the approval terms were set by the banks. The banks found that they made more money in the short term if they approved bad mortgages and collected those fees. And they know that they'll be held blameless because somehow people believe the banks when they say "it wasn't me, man, it was the government". The perfect scam.

You do realize that in the past 3 years, the percentage of failed mortgages for middle-income and upper-income folks is very similar to low-income folks, right? Funny thing, someone making $30K getting a $50K house is similar to someone making $100K buying a $250K house, or making $300K buying a multi-million house.

Actually, there is one bright spot. A few companies specialize in mortgages to illegal immigrants. And illegal immigrants have low foreclosure rates.

1) Nobody makes money making sub-prime loans. It's trivial for any idiot to understand that loaning money to people who can't pay it back is a dumb idea.

This is why Mitt Romney won't be inviting you to his inauguration. You don't know how to think like a high-flyer. I know a bank that specialized in subprime loans. They, in fact, sold off the good ones because the subprimes were their cash cows.

Banks don't make money off the principal. They make it off the interest, which on a 30-year mortgage would typically exceed the principal and more. In fact, one of the old Carter-era loans at 10% on 30,000 would end up costing the mortagee over $100K.

But what good does that do when people don't pay back? No good at all, if, in fact, they don't pay. But few people actually take out a loan with the express intent of defaulting on it and trashing their credit rating, they try very, very hard to keep paying. But if they're closer to the bottom 1% than the top 1%, they will frequently fall behind and that's where the subprime advantage kicks in. ZING! Late fees and penalties. Even MORE income on top of the returning principal and the mortage interest and servicing fees. Suddenly subprime doesn't look so bad after all. The same old story. The richer you are, the cheaper you can live - no need to resort to payday loan roulette or usurious auto title loans if you're a 1-percenter.

It's only when the economy completely tanks and people give up on repayment entires and the (foreclosed) home prices deflate that subprime actually starts to look bad from the loan servicer's point of view.

How many new substantial business ventures do you think got off the ground or went public in the last several decades without a loan? I'm talking about those large enough to have a national or even regional impact. Many businesses that provide the products we now use in our daily lives and the profits we have in our retirement portfolios simply wouldn't exist without bankers extending the loans. Whether the bankers benefit themselves or not is irrelevant (I can anticipate someone making the point that they

How many new substantial business ventures do you think got off the ground or went public in the last several decades without a loan?

Quite a few. For example, high tech start ups don't bother with loans for the most part. And family investors generally are a lot easier to get, more forgiving, and more generous than bank lenders. Loans really are for businesses that have a stable, predictable business model with decent ROI and a need for a lot of capital.

Quite the opposite, the CRA (of 1977!,) requiresCRA lending needed to be done "consistent with safe and sound operation." In 1999, banking regulators issued guidance concerning sub-prime lending and made the point that CRA lending needed to be responsible -- well underwritten, well priced, and understandable by the borrower.

Also

With respect to performance, Canner and Bhutta did three types of analysis. First, looking at mortgages originated between January 2006 and April 2008, they found that sub-prime and Alt-A loans originated in zip codes with incomes just below the level that "counts" for CRA purposes performed slightly better than those originated in zip codes with incomes just above the CRA level. They also looked at the performance of first mortgages originated under the affordable-lending programs of NeighborWorks America, most of which counted for CRA purposes, and found that these loans had delinquency rates lower than sub-prime or Federal Housing Administration loans, and foreclosure rates lower even than prime loans. Finally, they noted that only about 30 percent of foreclosure filings in 2006 took place in CRA-eligible zip codes.link [prospect.org]

That's right, tightly regulated lenders making first mortgages under the CRA had a lower foreclosure rate than largely unregulated lenders making other types of mortgage loans including prime loans. Blaming the CRA for the foreclosure crisis is the reddest of red herrings and allows the true culprits (independent mortgage originators and their enablers in the securitization arms of the big banks and the credit rating agencies) to walk away scott free.

And it's not like this particular fellow, Jamie Dimon, just got involved in the sector. He's got a long history [wikipedia.org] doing all sorts of stuff, some of it more on-the-up and some of it more questionable.

Sorry, Jamie: your company has become largely a parasite. For the average American, you provide no more benefit than 10 banks 1/10th your size: when you get so big, you have negative economies-of-scale.

But your salary is dictated by being big.

If you were serious about preventing such disasters in the future, you'd reform your compensation schemes and endorse restoring Glass-Steagal.

Some regulations are bad. How often do we geeks criticize regulations/law/policies addressing the internet, computers, or other tech areas? What makes you think the US Congress does a better job in the domain of banking and finance than they do in the domain of technology?

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting to reform regulations. The problem is that reforming regulations can be done as poorly as creating and implementing regulations.

They are in a left hand doesn't know what the right one is doing with fingers in so many pies. All they saw with the derivatives were double digit return rates quarter after quarter until the house of cards fell. So long as the profits were rolling in, they didn't stop to ask any questions.

Sorry, Jamie: your company has become largely a parasite. For the average American, you provide no more benefit than 10 banks 1/10th your size: when you get so big, you have negative economies-of-scale.

You have it backwards. Being Too Big To Fail is a fantastic benefit (for a bank) for being big.

I have not once opened a Chase bank account, but through mergers and acquisitions they owned 5 of my accounts at one time. Easily the worst bank I have ever had to deal with. But now I know where all my interest charges and late fees went to.

A funny side note...Capital One has done the same thing to me, they now own 3 of my accounts. I hope they're an easier bank to work with if something goes wrong.

Chase was expensive, but not bad. I had an account there for years, but cancelled when they started charging me for the honor of putting money in their bank.

They are also big enough to be stupid. My credit card interest rate is very similar to my mortgage rate, all because they acquired my account from another bank that had given me a promotional rate that is now about 10 years old. I must have been part of some edge case during the database merge or something. Anyone else hav

reinstitute Glass-Stegall, preventing conglomerates of investment banks with commercial lenders backed by government-insured savings and checking accounts. And the assembling of massive coast-to-coast financial supermarkets like Bank of America and Citibank should never have been approved by Federal regulators under the Clinton and Bush administrations.

Dimon and JPMC actually proves the rule. After the 2008 banking crash and TARP fiasco, Dimon was anointed as proof that not every big bank CEO was a bad egg. (Although JPMC accepted TARP money, they did so because Henry Paulson asked them to, not because they necessarily needed it). Jamie Dimon, said John McCain and many others, was old school and took his responsibilities to the world economy and banking industry seriously.

Obviously, not seriously enough in the face of the non-ending quest for superior returns and mind-blowing take home pay.

This Dimon fellow is the best used car salesman I've seen for a while.

He kinda alludes to the fact that they will use this fantastic new data center for customer service. My guess is they will probably use it to scam more money from people with some devilish plot like HFT.

Being decent and honorable isn't worth shit if the institution they work for is monstrous.

That's what it boils down to, at the end of the day. They internalised the profits and externalised the losses as best they could. They would have blown that bubble up for eternity if they could have, and paid no heed to the consequences. They want every cent you have, no less. Regulation kept them in chains, and now those chains are broken.

What we've witnessed is 30 years of large financial institutions gradually being allowed to do exactly what the fuck they want. Naturally, the monster devoured so much, so greedily, and took such monumental risks that it took merely a few years of true excess for it to ignite the biggest world slump since 1929. It didn't learn from then, it didn't repent or change its ways, and you can be sure as hell that it hasn't learned now. The devastation it wrought will happen again and again, simply because destruction is all it knows.

In light of that grim reality, who gives a toss how decent they are as individuals.

"We were a port of safety in the storm."“It’s a free. Fucking. Country.”

This article really makes me angry. Who does this support other than the IT industry that supplies them with 500 Million in servers, networking equipment & infrastructure?What is this data center going to do? A grad student could design a decent database system for trades and banking. So they now have a 500 million $ data center, are they now going to use that scrape a few more milliseconds off there HFT's or the associated algorithm's? Are they going to figure out the optimal market strategy to beat there competitors? They can't possibly have enough data to fill something like that, so it has to computation power, right?

How does this contribute to society other than support an electric company? Don't give me liquidity bullshit.

Separate your banking from investing and then we can talk about how "banks" like this isn't a plague on society./rant

Banks have a lot of data, and they need to do a lot of calculations on it. Simples.

And having a big data centre full of computers isn't going to help you with latency (i.e. HFT), it's for storage and throughput. E.g. to revalue your derivatives positions, run stress scenarios, risk analysis, regulatory reporting (from the general reporting you get the impression that Wall Street is completely unregulated; in fact, it's more the opposite).

How does this contribute to society other than support an electric company? Don't give me liquidity bullshit.

Reading between the lines and knowing something about the industry I would guess this has almost nothing to do with the Investment Banking side and everything about running the boring bits of the business.For a long time there was a question if mega banks could achieve better returns to scale then a large bank. For the 80s and 90s the answer was no. However, during the 2000s, mega banks have achieved economies of scale when doing international business. (we are talking about the boring, low margin bits - mo

>> JPMorgan Chase spends $500 million to build a data center...asserts that huge data centers are among the advantages of ginormous banks.

Remind me to short JPMorganChase tonight. Even the tiniest bank has access to "huge data centers" today because most banks already use an outsourced financial processor...which are all hosted in centralized, redundant data centers (which generally cost less than $500M).

Seems like this guy missed the leveling effect of cloud services - one that descended on the bank

Remind me to short JPMorganChase tonight. Even the tiniest bank has access to "huge data centers" today because most banks already use an outsourced financial processor...which are all hosted in centralized, redundant data centers (which generally cost less than $500M).

I wouldn't be altogether surprised if you found that JPMorganChase is the "financial processor" that lots of banks outsource their payment systems TO.

Just saying.

Seems like this guy missed the leveling effect of cloud services - one that descended on the banking industry a good 10-15 years ago.

Bankers are extremely conservative with this stuff, and (at least sometimes) for good reason.

No one person is. The financial crisis was built by a huge number of people.

But he did contribute. Part of the financial crisis is the lack of regulation in the industry. The London Whale incident proved we're not quite past it. Mr. Dimon sure as hell lobbied for less regulation.

I liken regulation to maintenance on your heart. The parallel is... your heart rhythm is surprisingly similar to the general market health. There are inputs (you're sick, you're running you're sleeping... vs. general economic news, P/E ratios, etc) and even feedback. It works most of the time. I wouldn't want to be on an EKG all day. You're not gonna put a pacemaker in me to regulate my heart-rate for the odd chance i may need it some day. Its a waste of the machine and my time.

But... every once in a while a heart can get out of whack. You get arrhythmia, and you need to shock it back to normal. My grandmother has a pacemaker. She'd be dead now if it wasn't for that. She also had a heart attack, luckily enough she was in the hospital when it happened, so she's ok. By the "never regulate" crowd's wisdom, they'd say "well, there are so many people's hearts that work fine that a pacemaker is never needed, it a complicated surgery that just gets in the way" she'd not have a pacemaker, and they'd assume she'd magically adjust.

So, we need to strike the balance. Too much regulation/heart shocking kills the market/patient. But, many people see the normal market/healthy heart and say "hey, we'll never need regulation, it's wasted money". They say, don't even have the doctor, don't even have the defibrillator. Well, then when the market shock comes, they're unprepared, and we all die. Or in this case, we came in in the last minute with the shock, too late, and the patient has limped along. And half the country states that the problem was the defibrillator, that somehow the heart attack patient would have magically come back all on their own.

I would guess that given the implosion of US market volume and all that space built out recently demand for DC space is just not there. Smart players (like BATS for example) are picking up space freed up by other at discount. Looks like JPMorgan is not in this category.

Or maybe* JP Morgan needs more space than can be picked up cheaply* They're thinking countercyclically - I'm sure it was cheaper to build this now than during the boom.* They're planning ahead - they need some of the space now, and will fill the rest over the next few years

It's all nice an well to rib big banks for being stupid, and it's true that they are often slow and inefficient. But they didn't get to where they are buy being totally stupid.

As to "we made a mistake", if that were all it was, why are those few bad apples not in prison and stripped of their fortunes? You let it happen on your watch, you are just as guilty as these criminals!

The first use of Ginormous was in 1948 as British “military forces’ slang”. It’s a blend of gigantic and enormous and refers to something extremely large or gigantic in size. Ginormous is a word that is currently acceptable to use, but only in informal conversation. It is considered a bit too childish a word to use in formal or business settings.

last i checked, slashdot is not a formal or business setting. it's a troll farm. arguing that point is childish.